Troy Denning - The Obsidian Oracle

Fylo made no move to obey. “No,” he said. “You Agis.”

“What makes you say that?” the noble asked.

A cunning sneer crept across the giant’s face. “You look like him.”

“There must be a hundred men who look like Agis,” the noble replied, tapping his kank’s antenna. As the nervous beast shuffled forward, he added, “Now kindly lift your legs-or return my silver.”

Fylo touched the satchel into which he had slipped Agis’s coin, then frowned and scratched his head in indecision. Finally, he shrugged and raised his legs, bracing his feet against the canyon wall.

Agis guided his mount forward. His heart was pounding like a stonecutter’s hammer, and a dusty taste had suddenly filled his mouth. Keeping his hand away from his waterskin only through a conscious exertion of will, the noble looked straight ahead and ducked under Fylo’s knee.

No sooner had he passed beneath it than the giant’s second leg dropped to the ground, blocking the way. “Let Fylo see eyes,” the giant said, reaching for the noble.

Agis’s hand strayed toward his sword hilt, but he quickly realized that his meager blade could do no more than slice the tip off an enormous finger. Instead, he allowed the giant’s hand to clasp his body. With surprising gentleness, Fylo lifted him into the air, leaving the noble’s trembling kank corralled between legs as thick as tree boles.

Two dustgulls swooped down to see what the giant had plucked off the ground. They were hideous birds, with scaly red heads, hooked beaks filled with teeth as sharp as needles, and talons dripping filth and ichor. As the pair sailed past on their tattered wings, they watched Agis with red, rapacious eyes, clattering their beaks in gluttonous delight. “Go away,” the noble whispered. “There’ll be no scraps for you tonight.”

After lifting Agis to the height of his own head, Fylo raised his captive into the pale light of Athas’s two moons. The giant bent his head forward, squeezing a platter-sized eye into a squint, and tried to peer beneath the noble’s shadowed brow. Agis closed his eyes and began to summon spiritual energy from his nexus.

The hand tightened, making it difficult for the noble to draw breath. “If Fylo squeeze, head pop off like lion’s,” the giant warned. “Open eyes.”

Agis did not obey. Instead, he visualized his own face, though with blue eyes instead of brown, and with dun-colored hair instead of black.

“Let Fylo see!” the giant insisted.

“If that’s what you want.”

When Agis complied, he found himself looking into a huge pupil. Immediately, he tried to lock gazes with the giant, but the distance between Fylo’s eyes was so large that he could not look into both of the great orbs at once. Instead, the noble focused on the closest one. At the same time, he concentrated upon the image inside his mind, using the Way to make the giant see the effigy instead of his true face.

Scowling in confusion, Fylo crossed his eyes, and Agis knew that his ruse was not working well. He had not penetrated the giant’s intellect deeply, for that required more time, and by then Fylo would know the color of the noble’s eyes. Instead, Agis was using his talents to contact only the part of the giant’s mind that controlled his vision. Apparently, since he could look into only one eye at a time, the titan was seeing a different image in each one.

Fylo turned his face to the side, trying to look at his captive with just one orb. A moment later, he snapped his head around to study the noble with the other. When Agis smoothly shifted his attention from the first eye to the second, the giant whipped his head back and forth in an ineffectual attempt to glimpse his prisoner’s face without locking gazes. At last, it became apparent that this would not work, and Fylo gave up, once again fixing both crossed eyes on his captive.

To Agis’s surprise, a broad smile crossed Fylo’s lips. “Fylo like seeing games,” he said, tightening his grip on the noble. “Fylo guess little man have brown eyes.”

With a sinking feeling, Agis turned his attention inward, replacing the mental effigy of himself with the image of a rapacious dustgull. A surge of energy rose from the core of his being to give the creature life, then the bird took on an existence of its own. It became his harbinger, a construct of his thoughts, yet it was detached and able to function outside his own head.

“Are you certain?” Agis asked, staring into the black depths of the giant’s pupil. “You’d better look closer and be sure.”

With that, the noble sent his harbinger to attack Fylo’s mind. The bird streaked from Agis’s eyes into the giant’s, disappearing into what lay beyond.

“What that?” Fylo demanded.

Agis did not answer, concentrating instead on the terrain he had discovered inside the giant’s mind. The region was gray and hazy, with half-formed thoughts whirling past like the wild winds of a silt storm. Once, the noble glimpsed a giant’s fist floating past, blood spurting from between the fingers. Another time he saw a pair of human legs protruding from a huge mouth, kicking madly as the victim was swallowed whole. As a master of the Way, Agis had no trouble understanding the significance of the images: the giant was considering ways to kill him. The noble had to take control quickly, before Fylo turned one of the ideas into a plan of action.

A craggy island drifted into view, with the crisp detail and solid aspect of a memory. Standing atop its sheer cliffs were six giants, all with humanlike faces. They were hurling boulders off the precipice, shouting, “Go live with dwarf, ugly!” and “Stay ‘way. Fylo scare sheep!”

Agis turned his dustgull after the passing island. If he could seize command of the memory, he could use it for his own ends and quickly force the giant to release him.

Outside, a blast of hot, fetid air rushed over the noble’s face. “Take bird back!” boomed the giant, squeezing so hard that Agis feared his ribs would snap.

Fylo’s demand surprised the noble. As a seasoned practitioner of the Way, he was well-versed at slipping into the thoughts of others. That the giant even understood that his mind had been invaded suggested he had an innate talent, for there could be no doubt that he was too dimwitted to have mastered the art through the normal avenues of rigorous study and discipline.

“Don’t kill me, or the bird will stay in your head,” Agis bluffed, barely able to gasp out the words.

Fylo’s grip did not grow any tighter, but neither did it slacken. “Stop, and Fylo not hurt you.” The giant’s voice seemed at once determined and a little anxious.

“Not until you let me go,” Agis countered.

Even as he spoke, the noble continued to guide his harbinger toward the island inside the giant’s mind. As soon as the dustgull’s talons touched the rocky summit, the six giants who had been hurling boulders over the cliff turned around. They launched a barrage of rocks at the bird’s featherless head, crying, “Go ‘way, ugly bird!”

Agis summoned more spiritual energy and visualized his dustgull changing into a mekillot. As the boulders began their descent, the bird grew a hundred times larger, its feathered wings changing to a bony carapace and its hooked beak into a blunt-nosed snout full of sharp teeth. The rocks struck the hulking lizard with a tremendous clatter, bouncing harmlessly off its shell and disappearing over the cliff.

At first, the noble feared that his foe had taken control of the memories, but he soon realized that they were acting on their own. Behind the six giants, a hairless rodent crawled over the rocky edge of the cliff. The beast had squat legs ending in curled claws, with loose folds of scaly hide and a ridge of bony plates protecting its back. Only the head did not seem particularly vicious, for beneath its squarish ears were Fylo’s bulging eyes and wispy beard.